Jeremy said...
Musicians get roughly 12-18% of cover price if they get a good deal. If you consider that the record company pays an advance, pays all the recording time, mastering time, and then does all promotion, marketing and distribution then the truth is that the record company doesn’t have much left over. Publishing, Royalties and distribution IS my line of work. You just need to look at the annual reports for the record companies, they are all in the red.
Jeremy<< ---------------------------------------- "TLC's contract with Pebbitone gives the group 7 percent of the revenues from the sale of the first 500,000 copies of the debut and second albums. That increases to 8 percent on sales over a million copies -- a "platinum" seller. Even if the group stays hot long enough to justify an eighth album -- a rarity in the genre -- the members' percentage increases to just 9.5 percent on sales of more than a million copies. The royalty range in the industry varies from TLC's rate at the low end to up to 13 percent at the high end. " I got this at http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:USDB77tA9wQJ:mbhs.bergtraum.k12.ny.us/c... So TLC sells 1 million records, and for that, the music buyer (you) paid in the area of 12-15 million dollars, and TLC gets a check for $960,000 to 1.2 million. That's 96 cents to $1.20 per record. So then, gross sales are 12 to 15 million, the artist gets about a million dollars. To be clear, a million dollars is lots and lots of money. But it is about a dollar per record.